I’m a foreigner (though not in America), and honestly I’d be stoked if the local theatre had “subtitles” night. If it’s not your first language, sometimes you miss quiet bits or mishear a word.

Singlish? Ok lah, that’s mostly just English with a few Mandarin words mixed in. ;)

Personally I would agree with you, that behaviour is dumb... if people aren’t blocking anyone/ jostling for space, then I feel like “who am I to define how he should experience this.” As you said though, in a crowded museum... that sounds pretty anti-social to be blocking every piece for your photo. :/

While I wouldn’t support a ban... honestly taking photographs in a gallery can be really rude to other people if it’s busy, and also the end result is going to be inferior to the 50cent postcard you could buy in the gift shop.

If it’s an empty place, I mean go ahead, whatever floats your boat... but it definitely can…

With the added side effect that European and Asian companies who might consider doing business with/expanding to the States go “yeah, that looks like a nightmare, lets put that off for now.”

Again, I don’t think it’s an organized boycott, or people closing up existing businesses, as much as it’s just “well America…

There’s always a bit of a struggle: galleries realize they can be cold, intimidating, and unfriendly to the general public, and they really do try to run accessibility programs and encourage engagement from everyone. I’ve been to some institutions where the security staff are particularly forward, almost like a…

I dunno if defensive pride in German heritage is especially common in Canada though... because while everything you say is true (I mean Waterloo/Kitchener used to be “New Berlin”), a pretty sizeable portion of Canada has German heritage, and the image of Germany was rehabilitated really quickly with many post-war…

No worries; I appreciate it’s a somewhat complicated subject.

I think people might still object to that because it treats a real violent event as lowly fuel for a creative experiment; the problem of Emmett Till being treated like a bowl of fruit is still there. Now there are a bunch of possible solutions to this...…

Do academics have a disagreements? Sure. I’m laying out the case that Dana Schutz’s piece is bad art, and offensive. I come to that conclusion from looking at what Dana Schutz studies, how she studies it, and what she has produced. Obviously some people disagree with that (i.e. the Whitney curators), but this article…

Thanks. I appreciate that it’s a complicated discussion.

It’s not subjective: the reason Dana Schuz is academically/professionally important, and the subject of exhibitions in New York and worldwide is because of the formal aspects of her work. This is what art criticism (worldwide) of Schutz is focused on: the process-driven aspect of the paintings, the gestures, the…

How could she have done the painting in a way that you wouldn’t be able to say this afterwards? (Other than to not do it at all because she’s white)

There’s a few things going on; first, lets be clear that Dana Schutz is one of the most famous American artists in the world right now, with her work held in collections across the United States and the world, and her work probably is already included in contemporary art history books. She has a level of professional…

If Wikileaks is to be believed, the files were already released into the wild by the time Wikileaks got their hands on it. Apparently they’d been in circulation for some time.

Wikileaks claimed it planned to release files later, but it’s press conference came under cyber attack. Whether or not that’s true, no one can know.

Regardless of exact timing though, the key information seems to be that the CIA lost control of its arsenal, into the wild. The files seems to cap out at 2016... but did…

While Assange is a douchebag who is likely to be a willing or naive helper of the Russian government, the CIA’s loss of its cyber weapons programs (like the actual programs, not just documents pertaining to their existence), is a pretty massive news story, along with the revelations that it held exploits to basically…

Jesus... these are all the same fucking guy? I know of these awful cases independently, but I didn’t know they were all the same dude. WTF.

The CBC reported on problems with judge-recruitment in Canada before. Basically they don’t have enough applicants, and while training resources exist for more senior-level appeal-court judges, they don’t at the junior levels.

What this means is that you’ve got people overseeing mostly criminal trials, despite having…

Socially it seems weird to insist on “Dr.”... but in terms of correspondences, “Dr.” is a pretty standard title? It’s like you’re asking for something patently strange like “Commander” or “Sir.”

Honestly, the pushback against the term “Dr.” is more eye-roll inducing than even the rare snooty doctors who insist on…

I think people falsely feel like it’s PhDs who are trying to take glory from medical doctors, and also North America has this anti-intellectual streak where people think “that PhD thinks he better than me, but he probably can’t change a car tire.” There’s this idea that PhD’s are kinda useless philosophers.